How do I stop being BORING

I'm in the same boat, Phoebs. I've often been told that I tell and don't show. And I know for a fact that my passive writing drags down the action and the emotion, which makes it difficult to capture and hold the attention of both the reader and myself. It's something I know I have to work on because I want people to read what my work and really be able to feel the emotion, to form a picture in their mind of what I was trying to portray.

As I am still working on doing that myself, I don't think I can give too much advice on how to fix it. But one thing that helps me a lot is viewing my work from a different perspective. Having someone to go over it and make suggestions, to point out what is being done well or what needs to be fixed has brought about the kick in the pants I need.

More Showing less telling

I have the same problem. To much 'telling' not enough showing. I can see it, and feel it but often when I write it - it comes across like a overview of a play or movie I watched

I posted a short a scene and got some really useful feedback one of the things that was shared and that I am finding useful is this bit of advice.
"action + characters + description"

Phoebs said:

I want what I write to be interesting, and often I'll realize mid-paragraph that it's not and I'll just stop and give up for the day, thinking "Maybe I'll be better tomorrow."

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Aww, don't give up!
Just keep going. Even when you feel like you'll never get there, keep trucking. You're aware of the problem and that's a good thing. Just keep writing, keep practicing, and don't throw in the towel. Giving up for the day is the only way to not fix the problem.

Get the words out and call it your "rough draft." Once the words are out, you can always go back and figure out ways to add more tension to your scene. I do this all the time. My first draft have notes all over it that say "add more tension here" or "this part feels flat".

It doesn't have to be perfect on the first try, so don't beat yourself up over it.

I'm boring too. No sooner do I identify and eliminate one problem - e.g. passive voice - than I find another one. The most worrying of my problems is that I prefer to minimise drama and conflict in real life, and this carries over to my writing!

I aim to revise until the point where I like or love a story myself. Then, even if there's not a lot of conflict, it's my story and I can get behind it. (Even if the story ends up hard to sell, or 'quiet' as it's sometimes known).

You should definitely keep working on your craft until it doesn't read too boring to you though - there are probably some really easy fixes there.

Writing w/o any twists and surprises can be boring. If that's the problem you're running into, maybe it's because you're writing what you expect yourself to write.

I'm having a lot of fun writing this. I usually do pretty downbeat stuff, and this is a wonderful release to sit at my keyboard thinking "What is the most ridiculous thing I can do here?"

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That is a writer enjoying himself.

If you need some prompts in ridiculous thinking, jump in on the Writing Exercises, Prompts & Whimsical Pursuits in SYW. I've seen strings of words that are brilliant in their ridiculousness. It might be just the thing to get the non-boring part of your writing juices flowing. Check it out.

Good luck!

Stop EXPLAINING stuff, and concentrate on NARRATING story. Really. Of all the things I've had trouble with in reviewing manuscripts, it is over-explaining.

Reading is a participatory experience. Readers (I'm a big one) love to participate in figuring out things in the story. In guessing, and maybe guessing wrong from time to time. When writers try too hard to explain everything, using the common excuse that "the reader needs to know this," it gets to be like explaining the reason a good joke is funny.

Go through your writing and look for places where you explain stuff, be brutally honest to your writing self, and try to understand what a reader really needs to know, and what you, the writer, need to know, but don't need to present just at that place.

caw

blacbird said:

Stop EXPLAINING stuff, and concentrate on NARRATING story. Really. Of all the things I've had trouble with in reviewing manuscripts, it is over-explaining.

Reading is a participatory experience. Readers (I'm a big one) love to participate in figuring out things in the story. In guessing, and maybe guessing wrong from time to time. When writers try too hard to explain everything, using the common excuse that "the reader needs to know this," it gets to be like explaining the reason a good joke is funny.

Go through your writing and look for places where you explain stuff, be brutally honest to your writing self, and try to understand what a reader really needs to know, and what you, the writer, need to know, but don't need to present just at that place.

caw

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In my case, I have a hard time determining where exactly I'm explaining too much (or even leaving too much out, which tends to be the case more so in my situation). After a while, the words just kind of blend together and I can't see through the muddle that is the crap I have smeared onto the page. xD It's why I much prefer to be shown specific examples within my stories I can stop doing it in the future. Some of us just need to be whacked across the head with it in order to learn from our mistakes.

I was wondering the same thing during an early edit of a new WIP. This is what I came up with ...

1. Start with an interesting premise. A world or a situation that hasn't been seen before. Something with possibilities.

2. Build a plot like a roller-coaster. Lots of threats, twists and turns, conflicts. Put your characters into situations where you don't know how they will get out. Torture them.

3. Develop interesting characters that are too complex to fit all of themselves into a book.

4. Write the damn thing. Don't worry if it isn't coming out as well as you had hoped. Stages 1, 2 and 3 will carry you through (and stage 5 is coming).

5. Edit, edit, edit to make the writing as interesting as the rest of it.

6. Beta, beta, beta.

Most folk seem to get stuck on stage 4 because it's not giving them instant results. That's when we need patience, and to trust in the magic powers of stages 1, 2 and 3 (to provide the structure) and 5 and 6 (to make it gleam).

It's a bit like making a diamond ring. All diamonds look rubbish when you dig 'em out of the ground. It's the cutting and polishing that makes 'em sparkle - as long as you are trying to polish a diamond and not a dinosaur turd.

I'm not sure if this'll help you guys, but I've found that when I'm telling I'm usually writing as if I were describing something to a friend. It means I need to "unpack" what I said into details that the reader can put together in their head.

So let's say I want to get it across that I came across a weird building. To a friend I might say, "There was this creepy house in the middle of the street, and it was huge. There was also this weird crow that kept staring at me."

I'll unpack the "creepy house" into concrete things and present those. What particular kind of house? What made it creepy? Give us the little details like the stain that looks like old blood on a windows or the broken roof tiles, or maybe the bird bones on the window sill. What made it huge? Present a detail or comparison that gives us a sense of its size. That kind of thing. Your reader will read all of the parts that you've described and put them together, in the same way that your brain looks at the bits that make up the building and decide that it's "creepy".

The tough bit is doing this in a way that's vivid but succinct, so you don't bog down the story. I usually try to keep my descriptions down to three or fewer sentences, but that's based on my own writing style and my patience with books.

When it comes to boredom within a scene, it may be that I'm not getting to the conflict fast enough. Usually you want to make your main character's goal clear as soon as possible and then introduce some problem to make us feel tension so we want to know how things will pan out. If it's still boring then it might mean that the stakes aren't high enough to really evoke a reaction in us. Your MC's goal of not dropping a plate might be boring if the only consequence is cleaning up the pieces, while it would be completely different if she's serving a king and screwing up will get her head lopped off.

Small mysteries work too, and things that make the reader hopeful (like introducing a hot love interest, which tends to get us wondering how things will pan out).

The more small questions and sources of tension you layer in the more interesting your scenes become... just make sure to not drag the answers out too long, or it can wind up the reader.

That's sort of how I see it, anyway. There's a lot more to it than that but I don't want this to turn into another one of my endless essays, and other writers can probably say this better than I can xD

You're comparing your first draft to some ones final draft.
Don't worry to much. Finish the story first. Restructure the plot and the scenes and tighten the writing during the editing phase.

All great advice already given here.

It sounds like you just need to tighten up your writing. So I would suggest continue writing it out until you've got the story out, then go back to finesse it with the best word choices to get the point across as succinctly as possible.

Storytelling is a blend of description, dialogue, action, setting, and emotions. Remember to incorporate those emotions and senses -- what are they seeing, hearing, smelling, touch, tasting, feeling? It's okay that you're seeing things as movies played out, but take us there with you so that we're actors in the movie too, so that we're participating firsthand, instead of someone in the audience that's told what's happening.

maggi90w1 said:

You're comparing your first draft to some ones final draft.

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Ditto. I actually call my first draft the "crap draft", because it is CRAP. At this point in my writing life, I can't write what happens and make it sound good at the same time. So I just write what happens in the crap draft, and worry about making it sound good in the second draft.

Sometimes, if I feel like my crap draft is boring, I experiment with way overdoing the drama and tension-- like, to an absurd degree, with flagrant overuse of adverbs and metaphors. The crap draft is crap no matter what, so might as well use it as practice.

First off, not everyone who has a great idea for a story needs to be a writer. Seriously. There are other outlets for creative people. Lots of them.

But secondly, if you really think you are a writer, and you know deep down you can turn that great idea into a great story, then you've got to live the story. You need to feel it inside you, even if you're female writing from a male POV. Even if you're writing in Omni. Even if your main protagonist is only ten years old and you're pushing forty. You kind of need to get into/under her or his or its skin.

One way to do this is to read things aloud. Another is to experience what your MC is experiencing - as far as you are safely able to do so. For ex. Is she wandering through a meadow, being chased through a woods, clobbering her way through a swamp? Then go out and do these things, or at the very least, visit a meadow, forest or swamp. Feel its texture; experience how it smells; see how it it looks at mid-day or late afternoon.

Not every writer does this, of course, but it does wake up the senses. It's one thing to write how it feels to hop over a stone wall, only to get your long dress stuck in the rocks - and another to run your hand along the stone wall and think, aha, that's how it feels.

I don't do this often. But I do it sometimes. Most of my locations I have experienced at some time in my life - a hurricane, a salt marsh, a muddy river bank, etc. But in one of my recent stories I actually measured out a room the way my MC did - by using his 'pace.' I did it in an empty room when my mother was moving out of her home. The feel of the room, the echo of my footsteps, the scent of an old cedar closet - it was all there. (And as I was opening that old closet a sort of wave or 'huff' of cold air blew out at me. Tres weird. It didn't go into that story; but it made its way into the next.)

So read aloud. Act stuff out. It might wake up the creative part of your brain which is (maybe) behaving a little sluggishly. Get you away from the 'tell' and into the 'show' and back into the creative stuff, away from the boring

Loving the advice from blacbird, Once!, johnhallow and maggi90w1.

The first draft is allowed to suck. Editing is where you remove the suck. Work on cutting out the boring bits then, and forget about them for now.

OP, just remind yourself that the writers you love have probably had a lot more practice than you and, well, you probably don't get to see either their early works or the stuff they trunked altogether. If you keep writing with the conscious goal of making it more interesting, you'll be able to.

As johnhallow put it - enough specific details to enable the reader to paint their own picture.
I often find when I crit that authors either over-describe or they don't put any description in. Or I find 'description' that just has words like 'house' or 'sweater' or 'chair' or 'building'. Very blah.
There are so many alternative words for these - types of house or sweater or chair, etc., or simple adjectives that can be used to paint a sharper picture and tell the reader something about the character or their setting.

Second, as he put it, it's always important to have some degree of conflict or tension. It doesn't have to be overt, it doesn't have to be a blow-out argument or a sword-fight, but something at least has to happen that moves the story forward. Tension can even be anticipating something, like when someone is getting ready for a job interview, or waiting for someone to arrive at an airport. Or a phone call that doesn't come...
However I find a lot of newer writers have the need to put in some scene early on showing the character in their ordinary life - waking up, getting dressed, describing themselves by looking in the mirror, then eating breakfast. Even when critters tell them to delete it, some insist they have to keep it because they are setting up the story. There's rarely ever a need to set up a story. Just begin the story.

Third is to cut repetition and trust the reader to remember some things.

Phoebs said:

Ugh.

So basically, whenever I write--whatever I write, I feel like it's boring. I love a book that just draws me in and leaves me hanging off every word so that it's absolutely effortless to read through it. And I feel like my writing just doesn't have that effect. I want what I write to be interesting, and often I'll realize mid-paragraph that it's not and I'll just stop and give up for the day, thinking "Maybe I'll be better tomorrow."

It makes me so unproductive and it's a constant blow to the ego.

What should I do? Should I just keep writing? Are there handy tips out there?

Sincerely,

Bored With Myself

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Are you talking mid-paragraph rough-draft? I think it's perfectly natural to feel like your writing is lifeless at this stage. Hell, sometimes in my rough draft if I'm not sure how to phrase something, I'll just write something like "John goes to the store and discovers that they're out of milk. He's heartbroken. Add to this scene to make it more interesting and gripping later."

The rough draft is just about getting the words on paper. You can gussy it up later.

Everyone has given great meta advice. This is my trick whenever I think I'm getting boring. Shorten your sentences. It speeds up the read and forces you to tighten. Try writing the next 250 words and limit yourself to one clause per sentence, then every fourth or fifth sentence just a subject, single adverb, adjective, single adverb and direct object. This isn't stuff that you will keep, but it makes my mind read a little faster, and pulls me out of my overly wordy tendencies.

Don't know if it would work for anyone else, but that's what has worked for me more times than I can count.

Boredom is what happens when you hold something back. Write your truth (in whatever genre you write in) and it will never be boring.

If you find yourself boring, then it might not be the story you were born to write. I know it sounds horrific, but I'd advise writing something that is the RIGHT idea. If you believe it is the right idea, then make your scenes matter. Scenes must matter! Or you'll lose interest! The best scenes are scenes that things are happening. Conflict is your best friend, trust me. Whether it is within a character, against another character, against the society, these will keep your writing fresh, but conflict has to tie in with your character and his motivations and goals. Conflict can't be there just for the sake of conflict. That conflict must be important to the story, that conflict must have weight, or you are cheating your readers and yourself. Scenes where nothing happens or scenes that don't impact the story, you should cut, even if the dialogue or scene is snappy or it is your favorite scene ever ever ever. I know it is an oversimplification, but if you want more information on making your writing matter, I can recommend several craft books. If you have problems with telling and not showing, I recommend reading craft books as well. Which ones? Just ask. I pick up a new one every month. Also something I've done since I was a kid but I find many writers do not do is analyzing books when you read. What I do with every book I read (even movies, anime, manga, television) is make pages of detailed notes on what I like about the book and what I don't like etc. Yea, it slows my pace of reading, but it has improved my writing greatly.

Just keep writing. Also my first draft is usually absolutely horrible, because I tend to write about stuff...instead of describing it (my science degree, darn you!)

But, I find that once I get it down, and maybe rewrite it again, it's much, much better.

I was reading a book that said to try writing a scene four times. Like a short scene. It might take you to better places. I tried it, and loved doing this. The first two times my characters do things that make the scene boring, but by the third or fourth time the scene would go smoothly.

I rewrote a memoir-style article today. Yesterday, I wrote two versions and was disgusted with myself. They were absolutely horrible...because they didn't really evoke any emotion.

Today I rewrote it again and cried while I was writing it. It's supposed to be bittersweet, so I know that this version is much much better than the last. I'm a little sad right now, though...

Also, keeping a diary will help you be more honest in your writing. On bad days where I totally rant I find myself holding my writing back too. I guess it's because I'm thinking I should hold in whatever I find annoying, disappointing, etc. But writing down exactly what I feel, even if it's horrible, helps me to relax and focus on other things.

Hope that helps!

StephanieZie said:

Are you talking mid-paragraph rough-draft? I think it's perfectly natural to feel like your writing is lifeless at this stage. Hell, sometimes in my rough draft if I'm not sure how to phrase something, I'll just write something like "John goes to the store and discovers that they're out of milk. He's heartbroken. Add to this scene to make it more interesting and gripping later."

The rough draft is just about getting the words on paper. You can gussy it up later.

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So why is John heart-broken. Was he baking a cake? Just curious...because if you thought that was dull, you left me thinking up a dozen scenarios about why he's so sad.

You have to wonder: is it that you're not writing a story that interests you, or is your perspective as a writer blinding you to its good qualities? Try to pretend you're reading it for the first time and see if that changes anything.

Inexplicably introduce a man with a gun, that usually does the trick.

And I reiterate my earlier post: live your story as much as you can. If you've got a guy trying to cross a freezing cold river, well then, run your hand under cold water. Or rub some on your face.

(Or if you live in the US, step outside when the polar vortex is doing its thing and sloping down to cover more than half the continental US.)

Doing things will wake up the senses and ideas/words/phrases etc. should start flowing through your head. I once had to do a chase scene, and even though it was based on something I experienced as a child - being chased up a dark beach by a guy in dark clothing - I could remember the emotions of the chase, but not all the physical stuff.

So I grabbed a flashlight and walked up my local beach just after dark set in. The way my feet scrunched into the wet sand - the tide was going out - and the smells, voices speaking in the distance, a guy calling his dog, a boat horn...

It all came back to me more vividly and helped me write the scene better. (Of course my attention was more on the guy behind me, so I concentrated on that. But walking the beach helped me remember how I felt the day I was being chased. Smells esp. will active the brain/memory.)